


Too Many Zeroes

by DivergentLunarShadowhunter



Series: All the Cheesy Tropes [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bar Fic, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Castiel and Dean Winchester First Meet, First Meetings, Gay Castiel (Supernatural), Happy Birthday, Lonely Castiel, M/M, Misunderstandings, Openly Gay Castiel (Supernatural), POV Castiel, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Pessimistic Castiel, Romantic Soulmates, Sad with a Happy Ending, Sexuality misunderstandings, Soulmate-Identifying Timers, Soulmates, Soulmates Castiel & Dean Winchester, Strangers, Well not really, and if your name just happens to be jess too, but the third person pov is limited to cas, but yeah that's what it is, i didn't think that would actually be a tag, if it's your birthday, no actual romance, that would be kinda creepy though, then here it's for you too, unofficial birthday present for jess, whoops sorry i spoiled it :p, you know who you are
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 00:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13260090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DivergentLunarShadowhunter/pseuds/DivergentLunarShadowhunter
Summary: Hello! This is a Destiel clock/timer wrist tattoo Soulmate modern-day human AU that's also a bar fic...yep, this one's got all the tropes.So yeah, if you've seen the tumblr post (or not), basically the idea is that everyone has a timer on their wrists counting down the days until they meet their soulmate. In my fic, Cas and Dean are random strangers who end up in a bar together while they both wait for their soulmates...and I think you can guess how that ends!Rated T for language and I guess consumption of alcohol too





	Too Many Zeroes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BoyfRiendsLamsJohnLock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoyfRiendsLamsJohnLock/gifts).



> I made a (very crappy) cover image for this fic, it can be found here at my tumblr:   
> https://isolemnlyswear-iamsuperwholocked.tumblr.com/post/169285485521/too-many-zeroes-basically-why-i-should-never-be

“Is it your time?”

 

Cas looks up from his wrist sharply, startled by the sudden voice breaking through his whirlwind of self-deprecating thoughts. He looks around, confused when his eyes land on the speaker, who’s staring at him from a few stools away.

 

“What?” he croaks out, instantly blushing and clearing his suddenly-dry throat. _Wow, great introduction, Cas. Way to go. You keep that up, you’ll scare your soulmate away before you even meet them properly._

 

_If you even get one, that is._

 

To his surprise and slight mortification, the other man simply smirks into his drink as he downs a shot in one gulp. “I said, is it-”

 

“Yes, it is.” Cas blurts out before the stranger can finish, his mind _way_ too late to the party. He looks away immediately and chokes down a big sip of his own drink, a dark-colored beer that he’s really trying to pretend he doesn’t hate. He tries to avoid looking back at the clock on his arm, pulling his sleeve over it in an attempt to hide the numbers.

 

“Me too,” the man says, piquing Cas’s interest enough to make him look up again despite his embarrassment. “I’m serious!” He laughs at Cas’s flushed, disbelieving face, flashing a piece of his own forearm for a moment so that Cas can see the numbers counting down on his wrist. He rolls the sleeve of his flannel down, but not before Cas sees that, not unlike himself, he has only a few minutes before he will apparently meet his soulmate. “I can’t wait to see who the lucky girl is.” He pauses slightly, glancing at Cas almost guiltily, almost like he knows about him- _but he can’t-_ before turning back to his drink.

 

 _Well, it’s not him, then_ , Cas thinks to himself drily. Maybe it’s because of this thought, or maybe because it’s not polite to just yell at each other over the din of the bar, or maybe just because he’s a cute guy and Cas can’t help it because it’s been an embarrassingly long time since he really talked to somebody. But before he can stop himself, he’s moving from his seat, bringing the beer with him, and settling down in the seat next to the stranger.

 

“What are you doing here, then?” Cas asks, managing to keep his voice relatively steady. The other man sweeps an arm out, the one without the clock, and gestures at the dim surroundings of the bar. “This is my domain,” he replies exaggeratedly. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else. You, on the other hand…” his eyes run up and down Cas’s body in a way that makes Cas feel slightly uncomfortable, taking in the trenchcoat and messy hair and wary but bright blue eyes, “you’re not someone I usually see around here.”

 

Cas laughs nervously, glancing at the beer he’s hardly touched since he stumbled into the place a little while ago. “It was cold,” he says lamely. “I was cold and I couldn’t make it home and I thought if my clock’s running out anyways, I might as well try to be somewhere besides my crappy apartment.” He doesn’t know why he’s telling this to someone he’s never even met. “If I’m being totally honest-” and why, exactly, is he being totally honest right now? “-I’m not actually expecting to meet any sort of soulmate tonight.” The word, that stupid word- _soulmate_ \- tastes dry and sandy in his mouth, as if he should never say it in regard to himself.

 

This, as expected, makes the other guy frown. “What do you mean? Everybody meets their soulmate when the time runs out. I’ve never heard of somebody whose soulmate just...didn’t show up. Unless…” he shifts in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable, “you don’t think they’re dead or something, do you?” He runs a hand through his short, spiky hair, eyes turning sad as he stares at the table. “That usually just makes the clock stop.”

 

Cas doesn’t ask why he knows that, because he can tell that it strikes the stranger in a way that is too personal and intimate to be discussing in a bar late at night with somebody you’ve never met. He doesn’t know what part of his comment he should be responding to, so he starts with the slightly easier option besides death.

 

“Well, first of all, it’s not- they’re not…” Damn. He’d really thought it would get easier after so long, but apparently it is going to be hard for the rest of his life. It’s not his fault everyone just assumes things. It’s not something you can just bring up in the middle of a conversation. It’s not like it’s easy to just meet someone new in a bar and say _hi, I’m gay, what’s your name? Horrible weather we’ve been having this week, isn’t it?_

 

“They’re not dead,” he says instead, breaking his previous rule about bringing up death. “At least, I don’t think so. I think...I think I would know.” He frowns, tilts his head, thinks about whether he would actually know if his soulmate was no longer alive if it weren’t for the stupid clock.

 

The clock itself has tortured him long enough, he thinks. It’s been telling him for his entire life how long it will be until he meets “the girl of his dreams”, according to his parents, his teachers, his friends, his family, everyone who ever spoke to him about it.

 

Nobody ever let him know that “the girl of his dreams” might not actually be, well... _not_ a girl, after all.

 

It’s not like everyone is a homophobe now, anyway; not at all. If your soulmate turned out to be the same gender as you, it didn’t really matter to anyone because they were just your soulmate and that was that. It didn’t stop all the discrimination, of course (Cas wasn’t sure anything could) but generally, people who had found their soulmate were celebrated no matter who that person or their lifetime partner was.

 

But Cas had spent enough time worrying about whether his soulmate was female; in fact, he’d stopped thinking about it altogether. With soulmates around, most people really thought it unnecessary to date casually or sleep around or have any sort of romantic relationship, and it was easy enough for him to just continue on with his life. He knew from his grandparents that the concept of the soulmate clocks hadn’t been around forever- his grandmother had met his grandfather right before they’d become popular, and they’d actually dated, fallen in love, gotten married. Although Cas knew (because nobody ever shut up about it) the clocks were a solution to heartbreak, the only true way to make everyone happy. That fate would bring together the people who were meant to have a life together, and prevent toxic relationships from ever beginning.

 

Unfortunately for him, Cas happened to be one of the very few people (but they did exist) who didn’t believe in soulmates. It’s not like he could deny that the clocks were ‘proven’ to unite people, but he had his reasons to believe that not everybody wanted- or _needed_ \- a romantic soulmate.

 

He realizes two things simultaneously. One, that the man had been speaking to him this entire time and he’d just been staring at him blankly. Two, that he hadn’t checked his clock in a whole five minutes, and the last time he’d looked, it had been counting down from seven. He forces the arm under the counter and refuses to think about how much it is shaking.

 

“Hey.” The guy was waving his arm in front of Cas’s face now, trying to get his attention. “Are you alright?” Cas blinks; the motion had shifted the position of the stranger’s long-sleeved shirt, and he can see the digits waving back and forth in front of his face. _Two minutes._ Cas had been correct. They’re both supposedly going to meet their soulmates at around the same time. _You don’t think that maybe..._ a single flare of hope sets off in his brain before he stamps it out angrily. _No._ The man had said it himself, he was looking for a _girl_ , and only a girl. And they’d already met, anyways! The whole point of a soulmate clock was that it counted down until you _met_ the person.

 

He sighs. Any minute now, some random girl was going to walk in, or bump into him, or meet his eyes across the bar, and he’d be left alone for the rest of the night, watching the stranger flirt and be happy and probably leave the bar with her, by the looks of him. Not everyone hooked up’ on the first day, of course, but he seems like one of _those_ and is probably already planning on it. He rolls his eyes internally at the thought, which somehow causes his glance to land on the area of his arm that the bar was still hiding from view.

 

 _Shit._ He doesn’t normally swear, not out loud at least, but now he realizes that despite all of his denial and anger (and probably jealousy) towards soulmates, he’s _so freaking nervous._

 

 _It must be under a minute by now_ , he thinks, brain already starting a mental countdown from sixty. _No no no no. It’s not even going to happen. It’s not going to happen to me. I don’t even want a soulmate. I don’t care about them and they’re stupid and I don’t need one and I’m fine by myself and-_

 

There is an arm on his shoulder.

 

“Hey, seriously. Are you alright?” Cas snaps his mouth shut, realizing too late that he must’ve started saying his thoughts out loud. He stares into the green eyes that are currently looking intently into his, swirling with a strange amount of emotion, and he panics.

 

And then he falls off the barstool.

 

“Woah, hey!” The stranger lunges forward, but he’s a moment too late to catch Cas, who slips right off the edge of the stool in the opposite direction of his attempted savior. One of them somehow manages to grab the other man’s arm, and then Cas’s back hits the side of the stool next to him; and although his legs drop onto the floor, quite painfully banging right into the stool that had stopped his fall, he thinks: _it could be worse._

 

 _There are many things much worse,_ Cas decides, _than being saved from falling by a stupidly hot, stupidly strong man._ His cheeks burn with embarrassment as he regains his footing, realizing that he is still holding the shoulder of the other man. He must’ve grabbed onto it on impulse upon falling, and he winces as he realizes he probably left a mark on his arm with the force of it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he manages, letting go of it and stepping back impulsively. It isn’t until the other man’s hand drops back to his side that he realizes it had been curled around his waist in order to keep him from falling, and he feels the flush start to spread into his neck and ears.

 

“It’s alright,” the stranger replies calmly, smiling a little and rubbing the back of his neck with his newly-freed hand in what Cas _would’ve_ called a nervous flirting gesture if he’d thought the man would have any reason to flirt with him. Cas tentatively sits back down in his seat, and in the blink of an eye there’s a hand hovering in front of him.

 

“We haven’t officially met,” the man explains, as Cas stares at the hand. He can feel when the poor stranger starts to feel awkward at Cas’s lack of any response besides a wide-eyed stare at his outstretched palm, so he quickly reaches his own hand out and shakes it as normally as he can.

 

“I’m Dean,” says Dean. Cas looks back up at him slowly.

 

“Cas.”

 

Dean is smiling, and it’s so beautiful and contagious that Cas feels the corners of his own mouth turning up a little.

 

“Cas,” he repeats. “That’s an interesting name.”

 

“Yeah, it’s uh...it’s short for Castiel.” The man- no, _Dean_ \- raises his eyebrows.

 

“Castiel, huh?” Cas thinks his name sounds much better coming from Dean’s mouth, and then punches himself internally for ever thinking that. He pulls his hand away and freezes.

 

**_000:000:00:00:00_ **

 

_Zero years. Zero days. Zero hours. Zero minutes. Zero seconds._

 

 _That’s it. It’s over_. The clock hit zero, and there’s not a soulmate to be seen. Unwanted tears prick the back of his eyes and he attempts to hide the arm and smile like he hasn’t just gotten the most unexpected disappointment of his entire life.

 

But he can’t. Because Dean sees, and just as soon as pity and understanding flashes through his eyes, it’s replaced by shock as he reveals his own forearm out of curiosity. Both of their wrists lay side by side in the space between them, displaying the same. Exact. Number.

 

**_000:000:00:00:00_ **

 

Anything Cas was about to say is immediately replaced by air that refuses to enter his lungs. He looks around frantically, trying to see where this Dean’s soulmate is, where she _must be_ , but there’s nobody around except the middle-aged bartender cleaning out shot glasses at the end of the counter.

 

 _Maybe neither of us have a soulmate_ , he thinks almost feverishly. _Maybe the clocks are faulty. Maybe mine or his ran out a few minutes ago and we didn’t notice. Maybe maybe maybe maybe…._

 

Dean’s still staring at him, and now it’s his turn to be awkwardly speechless. Cas opens his mouth to say something, _anything_ to break this weird, tense silence, but Dean beats him to it.

 

“Well,” he says, breathless. “That’s...wow.” Cas nods, wide-eyed. _At least it wasn’t flat-out rejection_ , he thinks dejectedly. Now it’s his job to come up with some sort of excuse so they can part ways and go back to their normal, everyday lives. Especially because, if he’s not mistaken, Dean’s face of shock is starting to turn into something more like... _wonder_. And Cas knows it’s the beginning of something he can never have.

 

“There must be something wrong,” he starts, and immediately realizes he fucked up. Dean’s shocked features snap suddenly back into a different Dean, a Dean with walls built up behind his eyes to prevent his soul from leaking through. They both pull their arms back, pulling back into themselves instinctively so they don’t get hurt.

 

“I’m sorry,” he continues, trying to pick up the pieces, but he’s already losing Dean. “I’m sorry, I knew this was going to happen to me, but I didn’t think...” _I didn’t think it would happen to you, too._ Dean lifts a hand at the bartender, motioning for another round of shots, and turns part of the way back to Cas.

 

“It’s okay,” he says, and it’s obviously not okay. His hand is far too tense as it pushes the empty glasses away, and the other, the one with the treacherous clock, is in a fist in his lap. “I didn’t realize- I had no idea you didn’t... swing that way. _I’m_ sorry.”

 

 _I’m sorry, Dean. I didn’t mean to...wait,_ **_what?_ **

 

“You-” he stares at Dean, trying to process the words that he’d just heard come out of his mouth. And then he’s laughing, sounding a bit crazy even to his own ears. Dean recoils, frowning and probably a little disturbed. Cas brings both hands up to his face and runs them through his hair, grinning like an idiot.

 

“You thought _I_ was straight?” He groans, placing an elbow on the counter and leaning his face into it, still shaking slightly with disbelieving laughter. “ _I’m_ gay as _hell_ , Dean. I thought _you_ were the straight one.”

 

Dean blinks at him, and slowly but surely his own shit-eating grin starts to show again, and some of the walls in his eyes fall down.

  
“Well then,” he shakes his head, “ _that’s_ a turn of events.”

 

“Yeah,” Cas replies, then frowns. “But...why did you say…?” Luckily, Dean catches on quickly, and Cas finds himself thinking _ah, he’s a smart one, too_ before mentally slapping himself.

 

“Why did I say I was waiting for a girl, you mean?” Cas nods. “I’m bi,” he says, shrugging. “But I lean more towards girls, so I just thought, you know…”

 

“That you’d get a girl,” Cas supplies, even though he’s not sure what else Dean could’ve meant to say. Dean smiles at him again.

 

“Yeah. Though I do have to say...I’m not really that disappointed.” Despite himself, Cas raises an eyebrow and hears himself say, “Not _that_ disappointed?”

 

It’s Dean’s turn to blush, and Cas’s smile only gets bigger. He glances around behind his newfound soulmate- he still can’t believe he can use that word now- but nobody seems to have noticed the odd interaction. Sometime during the conversation, the bartender had brought fresh shots to the counter in front of them, but neither of them had noticed. Cas picks them up and hands one to Dean.

 

“To soulmates.” He says it more like a question, and Dean takes his shot from Cas’s hand, brushing his fingers against Cas’s (intentionally or not, Cas isn’t sure), and nods. “To soulmates.”

 

And they drink, to soulmates and fate and far too many zeroes.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that literally combined all of the cliche fanfic soulmate topics and tropes possible, but I hope it wasn't too bad :) I'm trying to come up with original plot lines for longer, multi-chapter fics, but since I love reading cliche tropes with all my heart, I've decided to just go ahead and write the ones that I wish existed. That may or may not create a new series of works sometime this year...we'll see!
> 
> Hope you liked it! Please let me know what you thought (I read and answer any comment) and follow me on AO3 (or on Tumblr @isolemnlyswear-iamsuperwholocked in case I continue the series! Also, look out for a second chapter/conclusion to this, as I'm probably going to start writing that soon if I have time!
> 
> *Edit 1/8/18* You guys!!! You made this fic the 2nd most popular thing I've ever uploaded on this website in LESS THAN A WEEK. Thank you so much for reading, I love you all <3


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